From Frish (thanks to friend Janet who Pointed This Out!): Obviously a little USA biased, but, nice thoughts regardless.
Union of Concerned Scientists' Top 10 New Year's Resolutions
1. Defend Americans from unsafe drugs, toys and other products by requiring that federal agency leaders protect employees who blow the whistle when science is misused.
2. Allow the public access to tremendous scientific resources by letting government scientists tell us what they know.
3. Protect the air we breathe by obeying the law and setting air pollution standards based on science.
4. Restore our faith in government by providing more information to the public about how science-based policy decisions are made.
5. Use science to conserve our natural heritage for future generations.
6. Collect enough information to give us flexibility to meet future challenges and keep tabs on current problems.
7. Hold your administration accountable to high scientific integrity standards.
8. Keep politics out of science by reining in the power of the White House to tamper with purely scientific analyses.
9. Safeguard our health by putting the Environmental Protection Agency back in charge of evaluating the potential dangers of chemicals without interference from other agencies.
10. Protect us by shining a bright light on all agency meetings held with special interests so we can understand their influence.
The box of crackers Debra Rogoff bought from the grocery store had some crackerjack in it — an envelope stuffed with $10,000.
Yet the Irvine woman was more curious than ecstatic about her daughter's find. After all, who would leave money in such a place?
"We just thought, 'This is someone's money,'" she said. "We would never feel good about spending it."
Rather than go on a shopping spree, the family called police and was initially told the money could be part of a drug drop.
Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.
The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.
Luckily for her, the box of Annie's Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.
The Rogoffs never heard from the woman and didn't receive a reward, but Rogoff did return to Whole Foods a couple weeks later.
"I asked them if I could have another box of crackers," she said with a laugh. The store obliged.
My cell phone rang with insistence EARLY this morning, the day after Christmas 2008, with a quite FRANTIC client, Marta, on the line. I almost sat up even, but in reality, rolled over, got the phone and continued being supine.
Our print manufacturing plant wasn't open today, partly because the pressman and the "feeder" (who loads the paper) had not had a day off in 21 days!
Marta, my client, found some of her shipment of 48 page fashion catalogs deficient, to say the least.
Somehow, page 15 was followed by page 24 or some such, it was too early to actually write down or listen much!
She did admit that not all of them were like that, but she was going to have to check her entire shipment of 4000 and there was another batch of 6000 at the mailing house (not open today).
Part of the aftermath follows!
This first note is in response to Marta's lovely missive, enjoy!
From: Frish Date: Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 11:13 AM Subject: Re: Fixing the situation... To: Marta
Marta: I didn't say what we couldn't do, what I tried to make clear is that I (THAT IS ME PERSONALLY) can't make a commitment as to when you will receive your catalogs as of today right now.
We will do what we have to do to get them in your hands as expeditiously as we possibly can.
We are responsible and take our jobs just as seriously as you do.
Sorry to upset you further. That was not in any way my intention.
I am of the impression that you have 5000 usable catalogs as of today between your office and the mailing house.
So, as someone famous once said, things could be worse.
My abject apologies and my continuing commitment to make things right as soon as possible.
Frish
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Marta wrote:
Frish, This email, you have sent to me, is very upsetting!!!!!
Your company made a huge mistake which has affected my business, my staff and my family. I pulled 2 people off vacation and have taken the one day away from my daughter, who flew in to be with me over the weekend. Everyone worked overtime to get you the job so that we could have these in our customers hands by January 1st. You know how business is awful, and that we specifically timed this introduction to capture sale for the first week of January when all the retailers will be replacing inventory.
I don't know what stress you have in your job, but I have the financial well being of 12 of my employees on my back . And when you write me a note, casually telling me what you are not going to do for me... I am thinking of my company and the people in it and the safety of whether they are going to have jobs when they come back in the new year. I would think that you would be sending me a note telling me how you are going to get your employees back to work, fix the problem and get our catalogs to kesmail on Tuesday.
Does your company stand by your promises or not!!! Are you accepting that this is your fault and that you have greatly inconvenienced me and my company or not!!!! Are you going get this back on press Monday morning or not!!!!!
This email that you have sent me has only made my day worse.
I want to hear what you are going to do for me and my staff. This is all very upsetting~!!!!!!!!!! On 12/26/08 10:32 AM, "Frish" wrote:
Marta: I wish I could wave a wand...
I cannot and did not make any commitments on when we can replace the catalogs.
We will do what we can do.
In the meanwhile, use what you can.
Frish
THE BOTTOM LINE: BY MID-AFTERNOON SHE HAD FOUND 8 (EIGHT) BAD CATALOGS OUT OF THE 4000 (FOUR THOUSAND) AT HER LOCATION.
THAT'S 8 OUT OF 10,000 TOTAL. IN MY DISCUSSION WITH MY PRODUCTION MANAGER, WHO WAS UPSET ENOUGH BY THE NEWS TO ACTUALLY DRIVE TO WORK, IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT THE MAILING HOUSE HAS ANY MISPRINTS.
IN HIS VIEW, SOME 'MAKE-READY' PIECES OF PAPER WERE MIXED INTO THE WORKFLOW SO IT WAS VERY FEW SHEETS ALTOGETHER.
CONSIDERING THAT DELIVERY OF OVER OR UNDER 10% OF THE ORDER IS INDUSTRY STANDARD, WE'RE WELL WITHIN THE RANGE OF ACCEPTABILITY.
To anyone reading this far, Happy New Year 2009
P.S. The other work related item today, as a nice bookend, an order for $5000 worth of printing.
From a Friend: Now, I found something goofy with my new wireless connexion -- I was 1st Asst. Director on this rock video about 14 years ago; with the wrestler --- I had lost it
(Frish has 2000 hours of paid Archaeological experience and a BA in the subject)
The subject, above, is misleading.
There is no lesson - only confirmation that vhemt is the moral answer to the future.
(Hi Louis, on this note I copied my blog and two yahoo groups related to www.vhemt.org.
Thanks for smiling, but we are not just serious, we're Vehement!)
VHEMT IMPLICATIONS OF THE ARTICLE BELOW, WHICH IS DENSE BUT IMPORTANT.
Abstract:
The effect to the climate as reflected in radio-carbon dating of forests post-epidemic human virus in pre-Columbian times.
Forests grew nicely at the same time decimated human populations recovered from a pandemic. The article is far too heavy on the "science" of the mechanics of the dating technique and far too light on the virus or condition of human activity during the same time period...the implication is that HUMAN CAUSED CLIMATE CHAOS has been going on for a long time already.
1. WE'RE RIGHT. THE REFORESTATION WILL BE TREMENDOUS WITH LESS/NO HUMAN ACTIVITY.
2. BEFORE IT ALL CEASES TO SUPPORT US, I EXPECT HUMANITY WILL UNDERSTAND ENOUGH ABOUT AI THAT WE CAN AT LEAST ATTEMPT TO HAVE INTELLECT/CONSCIOUSNESS PROCEED.
3. BUT, PERHAPS NOT.
4. AI IS A REALLY BIG PROBLEM AND THERE ISN'T MUCH TIME.
5. BESIDES, IS IT A GOOD IDEA?
6. THAT'S THE ONLY REAL QUESTION ACTUALLY, WHAT SHOULD OUR LEGACY TO THE UNIVERSE ACTUALLY BE?
This belongs to "The Future of City Living" keyword...
Public release date: 18-Dec-2008
Contact: Louis Bergeron
louisb3 @stanford .edu
Stanford University
New World post-pandemic reforestation helped start Little Ice Age, say Stanford scientists
The power of viruses is well documented in human history. Swarms of little viral Davids have repeatedly laid low the great Goliaths of human civilization, most famously in the devastating pandemics that swept the New World during European conquest and settlement.
In recent years, there has been growing evidence for the hypothesis that the effect of the pandemics in the Americas wasn't confined to killing indigenous peoples. Global climate appears to have been altered as well.
Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands-abandoned as the population collapsed-pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.
"We estimate that the amount of carbon sequestered in the growing forests was about 10 to 50 percent of the total carbon that would have needed to come out of the atmosphere and oceans at that time to account for the observed changes in carbon dioxide concentrations," said Richard Nevle, visiting scholar in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford. Nevle and Dennis Bird, professor in geological and environmental sciences, presented their study at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 17, 2008.
Nevle and Bird synthesized published data from charcoal records from 15 sediment cores extracted from lakes, soil samples from 17 population centers and 18 sites from the surrounding areas in Central and South America. They examined samples dating back 5,000 years.
What they found was a record of slowly increasing charcoal deposits, indicating increasing burning of forestland to convert it to cropland, as agricultural practices spread among the human population-until around 500 years ago: At that point, there was a precipitous drop in the amount of charcoal in the samples, coinciding with the precipitous drop in the human population in the Americas.
To verify their results, they checked their fire histories based on the charcoal data against records of carbon dioxide concentrations and carbon isotope ratios that were available.
"We looked at ice cores and tropical sponge records, which give us reliable proxies for the carbon isotope composition of atmospheric carbon dioxide. And it jumped out at us right away," Nevle said. "We saw a conspicuous increase in the isotope ratio of heavy carbon to light carbon. That gave us a sense that maybe we were looking at the right thing, because that is exactly what you would expect from reforestation."
During photosynthesis, plants prefer carbon dioxide containing the lighter isotope of carbon. Thus a massive reforestation event would not only decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but would also leave carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that was enriched in the heavy carbon isotope.
Other theories have been proposed to account for the cooling at the time of the Little Ice Age, as well as the anomalies in the concentration and carbon isotope ratios of atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with that period.
Variations in the amount of sunlight striking the Earth, caused by a drop in sunspot activity, could also be a factor in cooling down the globe, as could a flurry of volcanic activity in the late 16th century.
But the timing of these events doesn't fit with the observed onset of the carbon dioxide drop. These events don't begin until at least a century after carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to decline and the ratio of heavy to light carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide begins to increase.
Nevle and Bird don't attribute all of the cooling during the Little Ice Age to reforestation in the Americas.
"There are other causes at play," Nevle said. "But reforestation is certainly a first-order contributor."
Dear Barbara, and those copied: Your heartfelt and legally binding well wishes can only be greeted with a wistful:
"Reason's Greetings"!
Have a safe and joyous winter solstice. Frish
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Barbara Ferrara <wrote:
Wanted to send out some sort of holiday greeting to you, but it is so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to say without offending someone. I met with my solicitor yesterday and, on his advice, I wish to say the following: Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Britain great (not to imply that Britain is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "Britain" in the western hemisphere) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
Disclaimer: no trees were harmed in the sending of this message however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced. In other words, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Yes, Sports Fans, it was my 54th birthday today. b.1954, am now 54, unclear significance of that, but it only happens once!
Found this little tidbit, tucked far-away on the web. Brings together my pre-occupation with too many people on the planet, and the role of religion ("sorcery" in this case) in making the world oh so wondrous, and my background as an Anthropologist and fascination with a place (New Guinea) that has more languages per square area than anywhere else on the planet.
